Prognostic biomarkers in Pancreatic Cancer

Pancreatic cancer started at the tissue of the pancreas – an organ in the abdomen that lies behind the lower stomach. Pancreas releases hormones that helps in maintaining the sugar level in the blood and assist in digestion. Pancreatic cancer is hardly detected at early stage and it is recorded as third deadliest cancer in the United States. Some of its symptom includes weight loss, diabetes, jaundice, blood clots, depression and fatigue. However, it is usually characterized at late stage that has been already metastasized. Current therapy of this disease involves adjuvant chemotherapy, surgical resection and radiotherapy. Yet despite of the advancement of the clinical management and therapy the outcome remains unsatisfactory to the patients. So, this novel research of prognostic biomarker helps pancreatic cancer treatment to maximize survival and avoid toxicity.

miRNAs as Prognostic Biomarkers for Pancreatic Cancer

Due to poor prognosis of pancreatic cancer early detection methods have been developed. To have an effective treatment options as well as the importance of critical biomarkers. However, miRNAs shows significance for early detection and diagnosis. It divulges to have great potentials as prognostic biomarkers in pancreatic cancer. miRNAs are small non-coding RNA with 18-22 nucleotides in length that have been known to be associated with tumorigenesis. It is also linked to apoptosis, cell cycle control, proliferation, chemoresistance, metastasis and invasion. This miRNAs modulates key targets and pathways in signaling as well as its unusual expression are associated with chemoresistance.

In terms of chemotherapeutic treatment of pancreatic cancer miRNAs elevated expression inhibits the anti-tumor activity. miRNAs is related to gemcitabine resistance by inhibiting tumor suppressor gene phosphatase and tensin homologue thereby activating the PI3K/AKT pathway. It is also showed that miRNAs expression correlates with prolong overall survival benefits from chemotherapeutic treatment. Additionally, down regulation of miRNAs is responsible for progression of various malignancies including pancreas, breast, prostate, lung and liver cancer. It contains anti-cancer role via modulating targets implicated in cell cycle, apoptosis and DNA repair.

Therefore, it is clear that pancreatic cancer utilizes various mechanisms to maintain a highly resistant phenotype. miRNAs epigenetic controls allow cells to quickly adapt to the genotoxic stress caused by chemotherapy. It is also quickly modulates the mRNA translation in pancreatic cancer cells in response to chemotherapeutic treatment. As a result, various kinds of miRNAs showed great potentials as prognostic biomarkers in pancreatic cancer. Optimistically, these biomarkers will form a solid foundation to have better clinical treatment strategies.To avoid toxicity and enhance the survival rate benefits.